Increasingly frequent extreme weather events aside, the day to day climate we are experiencing now doesn’t seem different than before. Any change has been so minute, so gradual, so overwhelmed by natural variability. Earth takes several decades to respond to increased CO2 because of the thermal inertia of the oceans. Consequently, the effects we’re seeing today result from what we thoughtlessly dumped into the air 25 to 50 years ago. Annual global greenhouse gas emissions really took off about fifty years ago . . .

. . . and are today greater than ever.

By the time the effects of today’s (or even yesterday’s) emissions are felt, we’ll be long dead. The consequences will be borne by our children’s children’s children.

We can’t pin unusual events like a mid-May frost event on climate change wrought by global warming. The loss of ~75% of this year’s grape crop is just one of the vagaries of farming.

We’re already seeing what peak oil looks like. Stubbornly high gas prices. Stubbornly high unemployment. An economy that refuses to return to “normal”. Asinine describes our new reality in a post at Daily Kos:

[T]he economic and geopolitical turmoil we’ve been observing is exactly what Peak Oil would look like.  Oil production has stagnated, ceasing its endless growth that we were used to in previous decades.  Economic growth rates have also stagnated, causing problems with debt financing that have brought the Euro zone to the brink of collapse.  Austerity plans cause even more economic pain and fail to alleviate the debt problem, while stimulus plans fail to result in sufficient growth to overcome debt burdens, although they do mitigate the impact on the lower classes who suffer most.  Any amount of world economic growth feeds directly into an increased global demand for oil, which quickly runs into our inability to increase global oil production, raising oil prices.  With great respect for Krugman’s opinion that Keynesian economics offers the way out of our current mess, he has not yet addressed the negative feedback loop between stimulus, growth, and oil prices.

Peak oil or no, spring means it’s time to muck out the sheep shed, clearing it of a winter’s worth of manure. I used to do this job with a tractor. I’ve found the work to be much more rewarding done as it was in the past and will be in the future, by hand. It doesn’t take any longer. It’s peaceful and quiet. There’s no inhaling of exhaust fumes. And the absence of machines means you can enjoy the camaraderie.

When the work was done, we all sat at a shaded table on the patio, sharing a lunch of burritos and beer, salsa and chips. The misthaufen will be next year’s compost. Our soil grows richer and richer each year.

Our children’s children’s children deserve a life equally bountiful and joyous. We owe it to them to do what we can now, every day, to increase the odds that they’ll at least have a chance.

Tomatoes, which are still covered at night, escaped damage. Elsewhere in the garden, spring is in full spring. The side panels have come off the solarium. With hot weather in the forecast, squashes and cucumbers are now in the ground and protected from foraging ducks.

Our first batch of ducklings has hatched – a communal effort among three hens, who laid and incubated the eggs as a team. Seventeen hatched – a single flock, with three mothers. Here they all are, on a walkabout.

With a couple of weeks of warm, dry weather promised, it’s time to get corn and beans seeds in the ground. And at the end of the month, peppers.

Flowers are blooming like crazy.

Nasturtiums

Dogwood

Iris tenax, growing around an erratic – a chunk of Montana granite, detritus from the Missoula floods

Even the oaks are beginning to leaf out. It’s spring in earnest on the farm. No reason to go anywhere else.

Arctic sea ice extent declined slowly through the first three weeks of April, compared to recent years. The slow decline through March and the first few weeks of April meant that by mid-April, ice extent was at near-average levels. However, much of the extensive ice cover is thin ice that will melt quickly once temperatures rise in the Arctic. Over the past week, extent has started to fall sharply.

NSIDC says the relatively high ice extent will have little influence on how much ice melts this summer, explaining that much of the ice cover is recently formed thin ice that will melt out quickly and that sea ice extent in spring does not tell us much about ice extent the following summer. More important to the summer melt is the thickness of the ice cover, and summer weather.

A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters concludes the only physically plausible link with the Arctic sea-ice retreat observed in recent years is the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations:

The most likely explanation for the linear trend during the satellite era from 1979 onwards is the almost linear increase in CO2 concentration during that period.

The study, Climate change and the world economy: short-run determinants of atmospheric CO2, is published in the on-line journal Environmental Science & Policy. Unfortunately, it’s behind a paywall. The conclusion, excepted below, describes the study’s major finding:

The major conclusion of our study is that the annual growth of atmospheric CO2 levels is strongly dependent on the absolute growth of the world economy, so that the annual absolute increase of WGDP is a key variable to capture the annual increase in atmospheric CO2. * * * Our study provides substantive evidence that in the short run, world economic activity is a major determinant of rising CO₂ concentrations (we also show that estimated CO₂ emissions closely follow the oscillations of the world economy). For each trillion that WGDP deviates from trend, CO₂ atmospheric levels deviate from trend, in the same direction, about half a part per million. These findings are important because they reduce the uncertainty in the links of the causal chain implied in climate changing, and allow for quantitative estimates of the required levels of “human activity” that would reduce CO₂ concentrations if business-as-usual conditions are maintained.

Co-author Tapia Granados, researcher at the University of Michigan, says (with a scientist’s usual hedging) what nobody is willing to hear : economic contraction will be needed to reduce atmospheric levels of CO₂. If we want to save Earth’s climate, we’ll have to disavow economic growth and instead embrace la décroissance économique.

Environmentalists made a fatal miscalculation from the get-go in failing to challenge the ideology of growth. Rachel Carson kicked off the environmental movement 50 years ago in 1962, with the publishing of Silent Spring. Carson intimated that the project of progress and growth was fatally infected with hubris. Carson showed that the consequences might be unknowable and awful – awful not only in the sense of “filling with terror and dread” but also of “inspiring awe, filling with profound reverence” as Nature took her revenge. Silent Spring touched deep emotional chords, evoking an archaic world where transgressing inviolable boundaries evoked implacable retribution from forces beyond the control of humans.

But in their minds, environmentalists as well as politicians and economists had left the ancient world and old gods behind. Environmentalists joined in believing that Nature could be negotiated with and appeased if not conquered and subjugated. Scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki points to the movement’s fundamental miscalculation:

Environmentalism has failed. Over the past 50 years, environmentalists have succeeded in raising awareness, changing logging practices, stopping mega-dams and offshore drilling, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But we were so focused on battling opponents and seeking public support that we failed to realize these battles reflect fundamentally different ways of seeing our place in the world. And it is our deep underlying worldview that determines the way we treat our surroundings.

The big mistake was in seeing the environment as separate from and even subordinate to the economy.

[E]nvironmental protection came to be seen as an impediment to economic growth. * * *

Now the human economy has become a force that is altering the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale, destroying the very ground of our being.

In creating dedicated departments, we made the environment another special interest, like education, health, and agriculture. The environment subsumes every aspect of our activities, but we failed to make the point that our lives, health, and livelihoods absolutely depend on the biosphere—air, water, soil, sunlight, and biodiversity. Without them, we sicken and die. This perspective is reflected in spiritual practices that understand that everything is interconnected, as well as traditional societies that revere “Mother Earth” as the source of all that matters in life.

It was a mistake from the beginning in failing to advocate for and defend the land and the environment as a spiritual practice. It was a mistake to buy into the growth paradigm, thinking environmentalism would be easier to sell if it could be portrayed as accommodating and even enhancing economic growth. By failing to stand up for the fundamental reality that we are part of and dependent on the web of life that keeps the planet habitable, the battle was lost without ever being engaged.

Similarly in Oregon, land use advocates committed a fatal error at the very beginning. Upon taking office in 1967, Republican Governor Tom McCall had the state’s quarterly economic development publication renamed from “Growth” to “Quality” (and later, to “Progress). In 1971, in an interview by Terry Drinkwater before a national audience on the CBS Evening News, McCall pleaded for people not to move to Oregon:

Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But, for Heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.

In selling and defending new land use regulations,  McCall railed against “grasping wastrels of the land” and and “local officials who cater to developers and exploiters”. But even McCall could not bring himself to reject the economic growth paradigm, attacking only “unlimited and unregulated” growth and calling for “healthy, imaginative, nonpolluting industry”. When Senate Bill 100 emerged from the sausage factory of the legislature, the most visionary piece – “areas of critical state concern” – had been dropped from the bill; environmentalists and a vision as the land as a value in itself just weren’t that important. The bill passed only because powerful economic interests – the agriculture industry and the timber industry – were bought off with a huge property tax break, farm and forest special assessment. Deals were made with other economic interests as well, including homebuilders and industry.

In the early 2000s, Oregon’s planning program faced a moral challenge as being unfair to property owners, depriving them of their economic rights. The program’s supporters early reliance on economics as its justification left them disarmed in the face of a moral challenge. Their response to the proponents’ “fairness” argument was a feeble, “it’s too expensive”. Their response, when Measure 37 passed, was to save the program by destroying it. Land use “advocates” promulgated and spend millions to pass Measure 49, which enshrined “property rights” as the heart and soul of land use in Oregon. “Fairness” supplanted the admittedly limited goal of “preservation of a maximum amount of the limited supply of agricultural land . . . necessary to the conservation of the state’s economic resources” – a goal that itself embodied the fatal flaw that would eventually lead to the planning program’s demise. Any regulation that hits a property owner in the pocketbook is now and forever anathema.

In saving its land use planning program, Oregon land use proponents betrayed and sacrificed the very land the program was supposed to nurture and protect, too timid to even engage in its defense. As with environmentalism generally, the battle was surrendered without being fought.

This chart from Calculated Risk shows that auto sales are now plugging along at rates comparable to those in the mid-1990s.

The U.S. population and the number of licensed drivers have both increased by about 19% since 1995.

While auto sales are up a bit, MasterCard Inc. reports gasoline sales continue to drop. U.S. gasoline demand fell 0.4% last week, 5.6% below the year-earlier level. Gasoline consumption stayed below year-earlier levels for the 35th consecutive week. Fuel use over the previous four weeks fell 5.2% from the same period in 2011, a record 58th consecutive drop in that measure.

This chart from and article by Robert Rapier illustrates why high oil prices are here to stay despite dropping demand in the U.S. and Europe.

While auto sales have now rebounded from their “great recession” lows, it’s pretty clear that the long-term trend that has persisted since the beginning of the auto age has reversed and is now down rather than up.

First, the beds had to be excavated, down to a depth of about 16 inches. Luckily, Zooey was there to help.

Then we lined the beds with hardware cloth.

Finally, fill the beds back in again. The one is now planted with peas (tomatoes are in the background).

The other, with carrots – prime gopher bait. That’s a sheep grazing in the background, on lush spring grass.

Gophers – hahahahahaha. You’ll not be munching our carrots, peas, and beans this year. Or so we hope.

Nasturtiums, overwintered in the solarium, are already in bloom . . .

. . . and the ivy geraniums are beginning to come on.

So much beauty – and it’s not yet May.

Will the trend lines soon start falling of a cliff? Well, the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington reports that ice volume is still at or near record lows for this time of the year. Ice volume for March 2012 was 20,800 km³, the same as last year but 35% lower than the maximum in 1979, 24% below the mean, and 1.7 standard deviations from the trend.

Most of the older, thicker ice has disappeared from the Arctic.

This March, first-year ice made up 75% of the Arctic sea ice cover. Thicker multi-year ice used to make up around a quarter of the Arctic sea ice cover. Now it constitutes only 2%. This thin, young ice is susceptible to melting. The areas in purple on the map above can be expected to disappear quickly once the melting season gets underway in earnest.

Melting sea ice is apparently initiating a previously unknown feedback effect. In a study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers report that significant amounts of methane are released from the ocean into the atmosphere through cracks in the melting sea ice.  Previously, large methane plumes have been observed emanating from the seabed in the relatively shallow sea off the northern coast of Siberia, but the latest findings come far away from land in the deep, open ocean where the surface has in the past been capped by ice. The researchers conclude:

We suggest that the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean represent a potentially important source of methane, which could prove sensitive to changes in sea ice cover. The association with sea ice makes this methane source likely to be sensitive to changing Arctic ice cover and dynamics, providing an unrecognised feedback process in the global atmosphere-climate system.

The researchers estimate open ocean emissions are comparable to emissions seen on the Siberian shelf.

Methane is about 70 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat. Because methane is broken down rather quickly in the atmosphere, it is about 20 times more powerful averaged over a 100-year period.

However, the long-term trend remains down. In the early ’80s, VMT (moving 12 months total) stayed below the previous peak for 39 months. Currently VMT (moving 12 months total) has been below the previous peak for 51 months – more than 4 years – and has a long way to recover before regaining the previous peak.

In Oregon, VMT was up 0.9% in February 2012 compared to February 2011 – the first year-over year increase in 14 months. Cumulative VMT for 2012 is down 1.2% compared to 2011.

The reported increase in VMT is a bit perplexing given the continuing plunge in U.S. petroleum and gasoline consumption. The chart below, by Tim Wallace and posted by Mish Shedlock,  shows Jan-Feb-March 2012 usage compared to the same three months in prior years.

Diesel fuel usage is down, too. The chart below (again from Mish) shows that Ceridian real-time diesel fuel usage through March is back to mid-2005 levels.

It’s a puzzle how VMT can be up at the same time gasoline and diesel consumption is falling sharply.

Still, there have been sunny days, and warm enough to eat lunch outside on the patio and enjoy a glass of wine on the deck in the evening before dinner. During the occasional respite from the rains, we’ve managed to begin getting the garden in.

Cabbages, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and onions have been planted out and are now growing in the raised beds.

Potatoes are planted, garlic is growing, and the winter covers have come off the lettuce beds.

We repaired fencing this winter, replacing posts that had rotted and broken off at ground level. We used the old posts to make raised beds for artichokes and for vining plants – summer and winter squashes, and cucumbers.

Leaves have erupted on the trees and shrubs, turning the woods a fresh, bright green.

Grape buds are starting to swell. The apple trees are beginning to bloom.

And there’s sunshine and warm weather in the forecast for the weekend – and no threat of frost in sight. It’s enough to make the heart sing.

There is one thing and one thing alone I never tire of watching –
The spring river as it trickles over the stones and babbles past the rocks.

Po Chü-i

Things were soon to change. Oil production in the U.S. peaked in 1971. Linn County passed its first zoning ordinance in 1972, and in 1973 Oregon passed Senate Bill 100 and began to implement this country’s first statewide land use planning program.

In 1981, James Hansen published his first global temperature projection . . .

. . . a projection that has so far proved to be pretty darn good.

Since 2004 world oil production has remained within 5% of its peak despite historically high prices.

Now, almost 50 years later, Willamette Speedway wants to expand. As a nonconforming use, that should be pretty tough. A nonconforming use can be altered only if the alteration would have “no greater adverse impact to the neighborhood”.

The noise from the racetrack is bad enough. The roar of engines and the blaring of loudspeakers can be heard a dozen or more miles away, every weekend from late March to early October.

But the issues involve more than noise, which disturbs the tranquilly throughout the city and the countryside and must be insufferable for those who live close by. More than light from the towers lining the track. More than traffic on neighborhood streets.

The big issue is the continued celebration of the car culture. Driving as fast as you can around in a circle, going nowhere, burning precious fossil fuels, spewing greenhouse gas emissions in the process. Oil markets are global. The atmosphere doesn’t respect borders. Our neighborhood is bigger than Lebanon, bigger than Linn County. Our neighborhood is the world.

The time for indulgence of such foolishness is long past. Continued indulgence of such destructive profligacy is unconscionable. Like Christine, the car culture is a killer. And like Christine, that killer is refusing to die.

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